Annex A Requirements specification: Safeguarding Case Review Tracker

This document sets out the requirements for the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker and should be read alongside the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker Directions 2021 issued by NHS England. 

Following the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, a revised Serious Incident Framework was published in March 2013 to reflect the changed structures in the NHS. At the time NHS England committed to review this Framework after a year of operation to understand how well the system was able to implement it. Therefore, over 2014 NHSE reviewed the Serious Incident Framework to ensure that it was fit for purpose and that it supported the need to take a whole-system approach to quality improvement. Following the review an updated Serious Incident Framework was published in 2015.

It links in with the Safeguarding children, young people and adults at risk in the NHS England: Safeguarding accountability and assurance framework’ (SAAF  2015). This document sets out the responsibilities of all individuals working in providers of NHS funded Care and NHS commissioning organisations.

Currently, when Serious Incidents occur within health care, they must be reported via an NHS system called StEIS so that the incident can be identified correctly, investigated thoroughly, and actions can be triggered that will prevent the incident from happening again. However, the current StEIS process does not lend itself to comprehensive tracking, as it is often not clear at the initial reporting stage whether an incident may lead to a statutory safeguarding review. There is also nowhere in the StEIS system to record if there is a safeguarding incident.

NHS England has therefore commissioned NHS Digital to create a new Safeguarding Care Review Tracker system which will  provide a facility for recording and capturing lessons/outcomes from all multi-agency Safeguarding Adult Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews and Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews.  Serious Incidents (SI) which have occurred as a result of harm which may have caused a failure to protect vulnerable children and adults at risk, may also be escalated for one of these statutory safeguarding multi-agency reviews. The Safeguarding Case Review Tracker will enable Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to submit information about Safeguarding Serious Incidents occurring in their locations and enable them to manage safeguarding incidents that have occurred regardless of the setting, for example those that occur in a public street or park, or in someone’s home etc. The Safeguarding Review Tracker will also be able to identify the number of cases open, themes of incidents and learning from any recommendations.

NHS Digital will provide reports from the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker to NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE/I) to support them to successfully deliver their statutory safeguarding duties, roles and responsibilities to all individuals working in providers of NHS funded care settings and NHS commissioning organisations.

Scope 

The scope of the collection is England.

Source

Data will be collected from all Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) to whom NHS Digital has issued a Data Provision Notice (DPN) by virtue of section 259 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Category

The information to be submitted by CCGs is data at record level as set out  in this table.   

Frequency 

On-going ‘live’ data collection with data extracted quarterly.

Internal processing

Some data validation will be required, for example to ensure the ‘Date added’ is not prior to the ‘incident date’, the ‘Date Incident closed’ is after the ‘incident date’, and that a CCG submitting data is a current CCG (i.e. has not closed, or merged etc.)

Data linkage

There is no data linkage required

In accordance with section 258 of the 2012 Act, NHS Digital has consulted with

• NHS England as the directing organisation and an end recipient of the Serious Incidents data, have and will on an ongoing basis be consulted on the specification, form, and period for the collection. 
• NHS Improvement as an end recipient of the data.
• the Data Coordination Board (DCB) in the development of DCB3124 Safeguarding Case Review Tracker Information Standard
• a small representative number of CCG’s nationally who have provided feedback.

The collection has also been developed in consultation with NHSE/I North region, and NHSE/I regional safeguarding leads.

Regular dissemination and sharing

CCGS will be able to log into the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker to update the data and cases they have added.  

NHS Digital will collate the data on a quarterly basis and disseminate this to NHS England via NHS Digital’s Secure Electronic File Transfer (SEFT) Solution. NHS England will carry out any necessary analysis of the data and will use the data as part of wider patient safety and quality of care reporting.

It is anticipated the data and learning derived from the system will be fed into a quarterly report shared with Regional Safeguarding Partnership Groups and will also be presented to the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG).

Data Access Request Service (DARS)

Data will not be disseminated via DARS.

Data to be published

NHS Digital is directed to not publish the information collected. 

NHSE/I currently has no plans to make the data available to the public, but it will share quarterly reports with Regional Safeguarding Partnership Groups and the National Safeguarding Steering Group.

Data prohibited from being published

NHS Digital is directed to not publish the information collected.

NHS Digital's existing Forms Platform will be developed to create a new Safeguarding Case Review Tracker collection system.. The system will use a web based front end that is consistent in design and function with the NHS Design Toolkit.  The data is hosted, stored and processed within NHS Digitals Amazon Web Service (cloud).  Authentication and authorisation is handled by the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) Single Sign On (SSO) mechanism). CCGs will be able to log into the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker to edit and review data that they have submitted. CCG level users will have access to see all records which fall under their given CCG.

Changes to this Specification will be managed in conjunction with NHS England to ensure that any changes are within scope of the Safeguarding Case Review Tracker Directions 2021.